Well perceived as ancient and crufty. I do not think there is any genuine obstacle to progress. But the thing is not just that some crazy people got together and implemented something we could all use or not, the problem with both systemd and Wayland is that it comes with all the propaganda that this is the future and nothing else, that everything else is "ancient and crufty", "unfixable", and "broken". This is clearly meant to demoralize everybody interested in alternatives. For example, there was no really good reason for Debian to force the systemd decision. That an entire distribution spawned from frustration about this decision clearly shows that there is enough interest and man power to maintain alternatives. Let's hope some people step up for X as well.